Quill pig is another name for a porcupine. Porcupines are unattractive and unpopular, but, as animals go, and unlike eagles, elephants, and donkeys, they are reasonably harmless good neighbors that mind their own business. Here's where we can talk about being good neighbors and why it's eternally important.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Better Osama than Obama?

I wish I could find the article that suggested to me that the "Christian" North Africa of St. Augustine fell to Islam not so much because the Muslim hordes were good fighters, though such they were, but because the North Africans didn't consider their societies, governed as they were by kleptocrats and bought clergy, worth fighting for. The closest I can get to it is this, two examplary quotes therefrom being these:

Muslim conquerors neither demanded nor expected conversion initially, and the Christians of the Levant and North Africa, who were mostly heretics on the matter of who Jesus was, were happy to exchange a hostile authority with one indifferent to disputes over Christology. Conversion would come, slowly, later, and generally not by compulsion.

A Europe (one could add North America to this) prompted to inhumanity in order to save itself would not be terribly Christian, and probably not worth saving. (parentheses his)

Osama bin Laden had enviable name recognition before 9/11, and so USians, myself included, were eager to see him "brought to justice" afterward: "We don't need no stinkin' trial! Bring his head back on a pike!" I thought sending thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan to search for him was overkill, but only figuratively. Even as late as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, thousands of dead Afghans later, the most opposition I could muster to the war was, "I don't think this is a good idea." I still cringe to think that when I woke up on the morning of the invasion I turned on the TV to see the bombing broadcast live on CNN's camera in Baghdad.

All this to say I consider myself as having been "prompted to inhumanity" by the desire to save myself.

Just as New Guinean women (at least used to) tell their toddlers that if they are bad the white man will eat them, we have been told that Osama is the worst thing that could happen to our nation: "He masterminded the attack! He hates us because we're good [or rich or Christian]!"

Hold it.

Osama issued his 1998 fatwa for three reasons: US troops on Muslim land, US support for corrupt governments in Muslim lands, and US support for Israel. If I hate Uncle Sam's policy on abortion, foreign aid, education, welfare, or any of a dozen other things he does in my name with my money, Osama didn't aim that fatwa at me, now, did he? And after 9/11, when there was "dancing in the Arab street" and parents by the thousands were naming their babies Osama, he didn't say, "This is just the beginning. Watch me now." The two quotes I have heard from him are, "I didn't do it, but I'm glad someone did" and "That attack went against my Muslim beliefs." (Obviously, he would not have said both; my point is that he was not quoted as bragging about 9/11 anytime soon after it happened.) Whether he's playing coy or truly innocent, he's passing up a heaven-sent opportunity to be a hero on a planetary scale.

But let's assume he's guilty. After watching Uncle Sam kill 500,000 women and children with sanctions against Saddam in the 1990s, he knocks off 3,000 workers for the US corporate state and a few dozen military people. Look at the numbers: isn't that like having a toddler stomp on the toes of a rapist? If we add that some of the victims were military types and the WTC workers were making money off the carnage, we have the toddler wearing stiletto heels. So Osama doesn't care about life. So what? Uncle Sam doesn't care about life either. What's the difference?

And Barack Obama is Uncle Sam. It took him three days to begin the killing of women and children in their homes in Pakistan. Did Osama kill women and children? Not in their homes, he didn't. Obama has mortgaged our grandchildren's futures for the sake of Wall Street. The only money Osama has taken directly from US taxpayers he got through the Bushes, with whom his family has had connections for decades. Obama puts people in jail for activities he engaged in with impunity. I've never heard Osama accused of breaking laws he makes for others. The list goes on. If we resist his depradations forcefully enough, it will be Obama, not Osama, who will be sending the most expensively armed soldiers in the history of the world to our neighborhoods to force compliance.

You don't think federal troops would ever be given orders to shoot to kill their fellow citizens? There's a shamelessly self-labeled "temple" in Washington DC dedicated to a president who gave just such orders: Abraham Lincoln.

When we pray for the well-being of US soldiers, we are praying for those who will be treating us the way they are currently treating the "insurgents" and "unlawful combatants" of Southwest Asia. Sharia law is devilish to be sure, but it may come as a relief after years of godless "compassion."

Of course, we could sever our ties of loyalty to Uncle Sam before he turns on us, build a city on a hill while we still have the resources, and call those who hunger and thirst after justice to come to the water and drink. Or we can wait for the Muslim (or pagan Chinese) hordes to rescue us from our uniformed heroes.